erton. Her strong
womanliness and the leaven of warm-hearted youth still stirring in her
would be quite enough of themselves, and, besides, there is her critical
delight in the girl's beauty, and the little personal pride and
excitement she undoubtedly feels at having, in so creditable and natural
a manner, secured a hold on the most interesting person of the season. It
is curious to see her forgetting her own specialities, and neglecting to
make her own points, that she may bring her companion forward and set her
in the best light. Miss Bretherton takes her homage very prettily; it is
natural to her to be made much of, and she does not refuse it, but she in
her turn evidently admires enormously her friend's social capabilities
and cleverness, and she is impulsively eager to make some return for Mrs.
Stuart's kindness--an eagerness which shows itself in the greatest
complaisance towards all the Stuarts' friends, and in a constant
watchfulness for anything which will please and flatter them.

'However, here I am as usual wasting time in analysis instead of
describing to you our Sunday. It was one of those heavenly days with
which May startles us out of our winter pessimism, sky and earth seemed
to be alike clothed in a young iridescent beauty. We found a carriage
waiting for us at the station, and we drove along a great main road until
a sudden turn landed us in a green track traversing a land of endless
commons, as wild and as forsaken of human kind as though it were a region
in some virgin continent. On either hand the gorse was thick and golden,
great oaks, splendid in the first dazzling sharpness of their spring
green, threw vast shadows over the fresh moist grass beneath, and over
the lambs sleeping beside their fleecy mothers, while the hawthorns rose
into the sky in masses of rose-tinted snow, each tree a shining miracle
of white set in the environing blue.

'Then came the farmhouse--old, red-brick, red-tiled,
casemented--everything that the aesthetic soul desires--the farmer and
his wife looking out for us, and a pleasant homely meal ready in the
parlour, with its last-century woodwork.

'Forbes was greatly in his element at lunch. I never knew him more racy;
he gave us biographies, mostly imaginary, illustrated by sketches, made
in the intervals of eating, of the sitters whose portraits he has
condescended to take this year. They range from a bishop and a royalty
down to a little girl picked up in the London s